


842

by Glitch_V



Category: Kokin Wakashuu | Kokinshuu
Genre: Gen, Inspired by Poetry, Japan, Japanese Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-26 02:19:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/645469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glitch_V/pseuds/Glitch_V
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fragment of a travel diary, found at the mountain temple of Tsurayuki's exile.  The poem and the rest of the work is not extant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	842

I walked along the mountain road. There I met no one who distracted me from thoughts of my lord. The wind was blowing chill as the seasons spun to the Fall, and only a lone crow remarked my journey. From this height I could not see the edge. The world seemed to stretch onwards ahead of me as if it did not end. The idle thought that I might never reach the rim intrigued me.

I slept at night uneasily and woke at first light. It was useless to try and sleep in the sun’s sight so I took to walking even before the morning dew had settled. I felt my unstable life, rising and falling and settling with my lord for only the briefest of dawns, to be little different from these shimmering orbs.

I saw one other form than that of my corvid companion. A farmer hailed me from across a field. She had been watching its crop morosely and spoke to me with little interest.

“Odd to see one such as you headed out so far from Miyako. Where be you headed, lord?” she croaked.

“I am no lord,” I replied, and explained the sorry tale of my exile to the mountain temple. The former nodded as if this were of little consequence, and I realized how far I was – wandering in these wilds – from the mores of Miyako.

“Then you should hurry, lord,” said the crone. “For, come the Fall, these mountains will grow too heavy and slip out of the sky. Their time too has come to abandon the floating world.”

“What shall you do, old woman?” I asked.

“Worry not for me, lord, for I shall continue to watch my crops until their time has come.”

I bade the crow farewell until they should join me again in their normal form, and continued on my way. My mind was heavy with thought, so I transferred some onto a scrap of paper, an old letter from my lady that I was carrying in my sash, in the form of a poem.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a deliberate misreading of poem no. 842 of the Kokin Wakashu, which goes as follows:
> 
> つらゆき  
> おもひに侍りけるとしの秋、山でらへまかりけるみちにてよめる  
> あさ露のおくての山田かりそめにうき世中を思ひぬるかな
> 
> And which I (quite possible inaccurately) translated as:
> 
> Ki no Tsurayuki  
> Written on the road to the mountain temple after our separation, in the autumn of the year I have in mind.  
> In the dew-like impermanence of the mountain fields of late rice, I think sadly of the floating world.


End file.
